1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a hard disk recorder.
2. Description of the Related Art
Hard disk recorders (so-called audio/video hard disk drives (AVHDD)) are increasingly used that can be connected to a controller device such as a set-top box (hereinafter referred to as “STB”) typified by a digital high definition television tuner, a digital high definition television (hereinafter referred to as “DTV”), or the like via an IEEE 1394 serial bus cable to record and play TV programs in response only to control commands conforming to the IEEE 1394 standard. At the time of playback of a program previously recorded on such an AVHDD, a user generally commands a DTV or a STB to display a list of program files on its display and selects a program file of a desired program from among the program files in the displayed list. The list displayed on the display at the DTV or the STB typically shows, for each recorded program, information such as the date, start time, end time, and duration of the recording, the type of the broadcast signals, the channel, and the title of the program. Among these kinds of information, a user generally places primary importance on the program title for selection of a program file to be played.
However, the conventional AVHDD has the following problem. When a user has performed an operation to record a program on the AVHDD using the DTV and the STB by a method other than a timer recording (when a recording is performed by a method where the AVHDD starts the recording of a program immediately after a user enters the command to start the recording), there is a possibility that a program title shown in the program file list, which is displayed on the display at the DTV or the STB at the time of playback of a prerecorded program, does not match the content of the program file. This is because when a user performs an operation to record a program on the AVHDD by the method other than the timer recording, the AVHDD records the title of a program on the air at the time the recording starts as the program title of a program file created by the recording. In the case where a recording of a program on the AVHDD has been started by the method other than the timer recording, some of DTVs or STBs cause the AVHDD to stop the recording at the time the program ends while some cause the AVHDD to continue the recording until a user enters a command to stop the recording. When the latter is used, the title of a program different from a desired program to be recorded is incorrectly recorded on the AVHDD as the program title of the relevant program file except for the case where a user has entered the command to start the recording while the desired program to be recorded is on the air. For example, when a user has performed an operation to start a recording five minutes before the start of a desired program by the method other than the timer recording, the title of a program preceding the desired program is recorded on the AVHDD as the program title of the program file.
In view of the above problem, Japanese laid-open patent publication 2003-230080 discloses a hard disk recorder that is designed to create a program file associated with a program title for each of programs broadcast sequentially and record the program files and their program titles on the HDD. However, with this technique, when a user enters a command to start a recording while a commercial message just before a desired program to be recorded is broadcast, an unwanted program file containing only the commercial message is created in addition to a program file of the desired program because program information contained in the stream data while the commercial message just before the desired program is being broadcast is still program information concerning a preceding program.